Terminator Salvation: Cold War (34 page)

Binocular red sensors dimmed at both ends of the double-headed train. Molly hoped that meant it was dying, but wasn’t going to bet her life on it. Aerostats buzzed about the wreckage in alarm, infrared beams scanning the crash site from every possible angle—all for Skynet’s benefit.

Which meant the Terminators already knew about the disaster.

Good,
Molly thought. She hoped the A.I. program choked on the images. Keep watching.
We’re just getting started.

She didn’t see any yellowcake spilling out of the train, not even through its gouged and lacerated outer walls. Presumably, the ore was still locked up inside secure crash-proof storage containers, just as Doc had predicted. Those were going to take some effort to get at.

Exactly why I brought the old man along.

The clock was ticking. It was only a matter of time before the missing Hunter-Killer came running to check on the derailed train. They needed to move fast if they wanted to hijack any of the uranium. Molly wished again that Command could have provided additional manpower and some transports. Without the reinforcements, she knew she could only spirit away a small fraction of the train’s total haul. Her people would need to grab as much as they could manage, then blow up the rest.

For herself, she just wanted a sample she could arrange to have shipped to Ashdown, preferably gift-wrapped. Proof that her cell and her people could hit Skynet where it hurt, as hard or harder than any of the general’s military types.

Let’s show ‘em what we can do.

Sitka extracted a roman candle from her backpack, retrieved from an abandoned warehouse full of forgotten fireworks. The girl also produced a lighter from her pocket.

“Signal?”

Molly had promised her she could do the honors.

“Let ‘er rip.”

Clambering over the fallen log, the teen aimed the candle out over the valley and lit the fuse. Thankfully, it wasn’t a dud. Bright yellow fireballs shot up into the sky. The color held a message of its own.

Yellow for caution.

As planned, previously selected members of the Resistance opened fire on the train from the surrounding hills and woods, but didn’t yet show themselves. Ammo of wildly varying caliber and stopping power pinged against the crumpled machine. Molly watched to see how the train reacted, keeping her gaze on its sealed gunports. Even crippled, the Skynet Express might be able to defend itself.

Her fears were right on target. The train’s red eyes flared up again. About a third of the gunports—the ones that hadn’t been jammed or warped in the fall—slid open. Cannons thrust into view. Their muzzles flashed. Bursts of superheated plasma scorched the riverbank and the edge of the forest. Snow and ice were vaporized by the blasts. Steam fogged the bottom of the gorge.

Hah!
Molly thought.
I knew you were playing possum.

Boulders exploded along the fringe of the wilderness. Towering evergreens went up in flames, turning into gigantic torches that lit the scene and cast madly dancing shadows. Molly hoped all her snipers had pulled back to a safe distance, as instructed. The train seemed to be firing erratically. Perhaps the cannons’ targeting sensors and articulated mounts had been damaged in the crash.

As if to compensate, the Aerostats zoomed into the woods to act as the train’s eyes. Searching for targets, they beamed back to the train. What they saw, the guns saw.

The nearest Aerostat—maybe even the same one that had checked out the dead bear earlier—zeroed in on Molly and the rest.

“It sees us!” Doc shrieked, bolting to his feet. He ran away from the canyon, deeper into the hills. “Skynet knows where we are!”

“Stop him!” Molly barked at Sitka. “Don’t let him get away!”

Jensen swung up his shotgun. The weapon went off in Molly’s ears. Buckshot ripped through the Aerostat, which was built for speed and agility, not durability. She and Tammi ducked to avoid being tagged by shrapnel. Sparks flew from the drone’s ruptured casing as it tumbled through the air before crashing into a solid tree trunk. Breaking apart, its lifeless pieces came to rest at the base of the pine.

Twin red sensors blinked out.

No more spying for you,
Molly thought vindictively. She shoved Tammi and Jensen away from the fallen log only seconds before a plasma blast reduced it to splinters. The Alaskan guerillas scrambled to a new location.

Not far away, Sitka tackled Doc, knocking the panicked scientist to the ground. Getting a firm grip on his arm, she yanked him to his feet, then dragged him back to the others. Molly was glad to see that he hadn’t gone far. His part in this operation wasn’t over yet.

“No more of that,” she chided him. “Nobody runs out until I say so.”

He gave Sitka a dirty look. The teen kept her fingers locked around his arm. Then he turned back to the group’s leader, his eyes imploring in the red glow of the firelight.

“It’s not fair,” he whimpered. “I used to work in an office. I’m not cut out for this sort of thing.” He licked his lips. His hands shook. “God, could I use a drink right now!”

“Later,” Molly promised, offering a carrot. “You stick with us and you can have all the moonshine you want when this is over with.”

The promise of booze steadied the old man’s frazzled nerves. “Really?”

“Scout’s honor.”

Explosions, coming from the gorge below, cut short the pep talk. Molly realized that phase three of the assault on the train had begun. She watched from above as daring Resistance fighters charged from the woods toward the crash site. Dodging fire from the misaligned cannons, they targeted the exposed gun ports. Strong arms flung grenades, pipe bombs, blasting caps, and sputtering sticks of dynamite into the open gaps around the cannons.

Explosion went off inside and around the gun ports, blowing up the train’s defenses one by one. Warped metal screamed in protest as the damaged cannons fought to swivel into position. White-hot blasts tore up the landscape, yielding yet more steam and melted ice, but missed the nimble guerillas. The last of the river’s ice was broken loose by the explosions and sizzling plasma. Debris from the wrecked cannons was swept away by the current.

Molly silently cheered the bomb-throwers on. So far, everything was going according to plan.

Only one cannon still pointed in the attackers’ direction. Vic Folger raced toward it, holding a smoking pipe bomb. He hurled the explosive at the gun port, but his throw fell short, landing several yards short of its target. Not giving up, the former soccer coach dashed forward and kicked the bomb straight past the cannon into the gap behind it.

“Goal!” he yelled.

It was his final victory. The cannon wrenched itself in his direction. Its muzzle flashed like lightning. A single burst of plasma reduced him to ashes in an instant.

A second later, the pipe bomb exploded, avenging his death. Flames erupted behind the cannon, blasting it all the way onto the shore. Charred fragments landed just where Folger had been standing only moments before.

Mission accomplished. Molly mourned the man’s death, but honored his sacrifice. She had expected to lose some good people in this attack. Too bad one of them had to be Vic.

The echoes of the battle, bouncing off the steep walls of the gorge, began to fade away. As nearly as Molly could tell, there were no more guns pointed in their direction. A couple of Aerostats were still buzzing around, but they posed no actual threat. They were good for surveillance only.

The way was clear, at least for the moment.

This time Molly gave the signal. Retrieving another roman candle from Sitka’s pack, she lit the fuse and fired it out over the river. The streaking fireballs were a different color than before.

Green for go.

The Resistance fell upon the disarmed train like a pack of wolves, whooping and hollering, a few of them firing their guns in the air. Molly scowled at the undisciplined display. Granted, they had long ago sacrificed the element of surprise, but they could not afford to get sloppy. Dog sleds scampered down the hills and along both sides of the river, ready to cart away as much radioactive booty as they could carry. Protective lining in the metal drums and foot lockers was supposed to cut down on the emissions, but Molly knew that a little excess radiation wasn’t something most freedom fighters cared about these days. Cancer was an abstract, long-term danger. Few of the guerillas expected to live long enough to worry about it.

Herself included.

She was eager to take part in the plunder.
After all, why should the rest of the cell have all the fun?
She wanted to gather her gift basket for General Ashdown.
A nice big slice of yellowcake for him to swallow along with his words, and a hefty portion of crow.

“Go for it!” she shouted to those who were closest. “But stay sharp!”

Pulling out flashlights and kerosene torches, now that the enemy had apparently been subdued, they dashed down to the riverbed. Smoke and haze hung over the floor of the canyon. Oily machine parts littered the snow. Bits of flaming debris sputtered out along their path. Burning timbers crackled beneath the weight of the train. High above their heads, the truncated ends of the bridge jutted from both sides of the canyon like roads to nowhere. The northern lights added a surreal touch of beauty to the devastation. The train’s glowing red eyes impotently tracked the Resistance teams as they converged on their prey.

Molly looked forward to stealing the uranium from right out beneath the train’s optical sensors.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer machine!

She led the way, and hugged the northern shore of the river, being careful not to slip on the icy stones. Tammi and Jensen followed closely. Sitka brought up the rear, dragging Doc behind her. A damaged railcar, lying atop a heap of splintered trestles, called out to her. Its armor plating had been sundered in the fall, tearing open a deep gash that looked wide enough to squeeze through. The opening was like an invitation.

Don’t mind if I do,
she thought.
Yellowcake, here we come!

“This way,” she called out to the others. Elsewhere along the length of the downed train, she saw her fellow bushwhackers attacking other cars with crowbars, sledgehammers, and even a welding torch. They went to work, peeling the train’s titanium skin from its bones. Lookouts stayed on alert. She shouted at the team behind her.

“Over here. I think I see a way in!”

She had just started climb up the heaped logs toward the gap, however, when the hiss of hydraulic doors came from both of the train’s twin locomotives. The bullet-shaped noses opened up, unfolding like the petals of a deadly metal flower, and disgorged four new machines that came roaring out.

Molly’s blood went cold. This wasn’t part of the plan.

“What the fuck?”

The streamlined newcomers resembled a cross between a Terminator and a snowmobile, not unlike the two-wheeled Moto-Terminators that sometimes patrolled Alaska’s few remaining highways. But these driverless killing machines had obviously been designed for more hazardous terrain. Growling two-stroke engines broke all the old noise pollution standards. Sleek black skis preceded the machines’ tapered, aerodynamic noses. Motorized tracks at the rear propelled them across the snow and ice. Binocular red sensors were mounted in their heads.

Dual mini-guns projected from both sides like stabilizers.

The would-be looters were caught by surprise. Rounds of gunfire cut down a score of humans before they could even grab for their weapons. The lookouts fired back at the speeding machines, while the rest scattered for the woods, the snowmachines chasing after them at sixty, maybe seventy miles per hour.

Molly watched in horror as her meticulously planned heist turned into a bloody retreat. “Fucking Snowminators,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

The killer snowmachines were something new—the Resistance had never encountered them before. They expertly dodged the sentries’ bullets. Uranium slugs tore right through the backs of fleeing men and women. Dogs and dogsleds were shredded. Gunfire and screams filled the air. A lucky shot winged one snowmachine, sending it spinning across the beach, but it righted itself and kept on coming. Its guns nailed one of the lookouts fighting back against the unexpected adversaries. A high-powered Barrett rifle was lost in the snow.

It was the fuel run at the pipeline, all over again....

“Watch out!” Tammi shouted. She pointed wildly, even as Sitka and Doc rushed past her, almost catching up with Molly. The pregnant teen unshouldered her M-16. “Here comes one!”

A speeding snowmachine jumped the river, cutting them off from the woods. It turned toward them, its side-mounted weapons swinging into place. A burst from its chain gun caught Tom Jensen in the side. He was dead before he knew it, his shotgun clattering onto the snow-covered rocks. His blood proved even redder than his beard.

Molly was shocked at just how quickly their fortunes had reversed. At this rate, they’d all be dead in minutes. She realized their only chance was the armored railcar itself. The vertical gap looked too narrow for the Terminator to squeeze through.

She jumped onto the piled timbers, and motioned to the others.

“Into the train, pronto!”

Sitka scrambled up after her. Between the two of them, they managed to haul Doc up toward the gap. An eerie red light could be glimpsed through the opening. Molly had no idea what was waiting for them inside the car, but it had to be safer than facing the machine that had just killed Jensen. She shoved her companions through the gap.

“In you go!”

That left only Tammi in the line of fire. Taking shelter within the narrow aperture, Molly saw the young woman crouching behind a pile of fallen railway tracks. One of the Resistance’s own snowmobiles was parked nearby, but Tammi had no way of getting to it. She fired back at the Snowminator as it skied toward her at a frightening speed. The M-16 blared, but scored only glancing blows off the speeding snowmachine. Empty shells spewed from her gun.